The Materials Research Laboratory (MRL) supports materials research in cooperation with the faculty and students of the departments of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Physics, Materials Science and Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, and Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. MRL also operates major central facilities for materials research. These include the Center for Microcharacterization of Materials that has instrumentation for the characterization of the structure and microchemistry of materials, and the EpiCenter that synthesizes and prepares a wide spectrum of materials and single crystals, thin films, multilayers, and artificially tailored materials by MBE, CBE, MOCVD, and other methods. Other major facilities are the Computer Facility, Laser Laboratory, Microfabrication Facility, and High-Temperature Facility. MRL also supports a large number of smaller specialized facilities. Two beamline sectors at the Advanced Photon Source, a synchrotron based x-ray source located at Argonne National Laboratory, and two beam lines at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory are operated by MRL. MRL welcomes use of its facilities by researchers at the University of Illinois, other universities, National Laboratories, and industry. MRL focuses its efforts on interdisciplinary research and operates programs supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. It has three major programs: metals and ceramics (DOE), solid-state sciences (DOE), and the Science and Technology Center for Superconductivity (NSF) and a number of multi-investigator programs sponsored by federal agencies. Within these programs, major research areas are superconductivity, electronic and transport properties of solids, catalysis, interfaces and properties of modulated structures, organic and polymeric materials, semiconductor physics, theory and computational methods for materials, radiation effects, synthesis and properties of ceramics, lattice defects and deformation and fracture of solids, and mesoscopic materials. These programs and others develop from faculty research initiatives within the structure of the Materials Research Laboratory.

Faculty associated with MRL are listed below. Research projects conducted in the College of Engineering are described in the respective departmental sections. Department of Chemical Engineering H. G. Drickamer E. G. Seebauer C. F. Zukoski Department of Chemistry P. W. Bohn D. Dlott H. G. Drickamer A. A. Gewirth G. S. Girolami V. Gupta W. G. Klemperer J. S. Moore R. Nuzzo T. B. Rauchfuss A. Scheeline K. S. Suslick A. Wieckowski Department of Materials Science and Engineering R. S. Averback H. K. Birnbaum P. Braun D. Cahill H. H. Chen G. Ehrlich J. M. Gibson S. Granick J. E. Greene D. Johnson J. Lewis D. A. Payne I. Petrov I. M. Robertson A. A. Rockett K. Schweizer A. Zangvil Department of Mathematics R. Sowers Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering D. F. Socie A. Pearlstein Department of Physics T-C. Chiang S. L. Cooper H. G. Drickamer J. Eckstein C. P. Flynn D. M. Ginsberg P. M. Goldbart L. Greene M. V. Klein A. J. Leggett R. M. Martin D. Pines I. Robinson M. B. Salamon R. O. Simmons C. P. Slichter D. J. Van Harlingen J. P. Wolfe A. Yazdani Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics P. Sofronis K. J. Hsia